Some psychological conflicts caused by group bonus methods of payment.

The need for a high level of industrial output has given rise in recent years to a widespread discussion on wage incentives. Although no statistics exist showing the total number of workers in British industry who are paid by results, such figures as the Ministry of Labour has been able to collect indicate that the number is increasing. In October, 1951, just over a third of the workers at the 56,200 industrial establishments surveyed by the Ministry were paid on some system of payment by results, and in nearly all groups of industries the percentage of workers was higher than it had been in October, 1949 (Ministry of Labour Gazette, 1952). In a pamphlet giving the results of the 1949 inquiry the Ministry of Labour and National Service (1951) stated that wage incentive schemes, if well designed and suitable, " will benefit the nation as a whole and give mutual advantage and satisfaction to the employers and workers concerned " and advocated " a more general adoption" of such schemes. Thus official encouragement is now being given to the use of such schemes. This article presents some results of recent researches which indicate not only the difficulties of applying incentive payment to many industrial processes but also the often harmful effects on the morale and possibly on the health of the workers. Many claims have been made that wage incentive schemes lead to increased production, but attempts to secure reliable evidence on this point have usually met with failure, since in practice it has proved impossible to isolate the effects of the " incentive " from those of other factors. For example, as the International Labour Office (1951) among others has pointed out, a subsequent rise in production may be largely due to " the work study which is required to enable a system of payment by results to function smoothly and successfully ". Many other variables also make it difficult to establish a causal as distinct from a temporal relationship. The aim of this article, however, is not to discuss bonus systems in general or to examine them in relation to their effect on production, but to summarize some of the main results of an inquiry into the attitudes of certain groups of industrial workers towards their group bonus methods of payment. Few scientific studies have yet been made of workers' attitudes to their systems of payment, nor has …